Midd splits a weekend pair Panthers fall to Dartmouth before Tufts romp

Author: Tory Hayes

After sweeping each of its first four matches 7-0, the Middlebury men's tennis team flew the coop over spring break, heading to sunny California for its first real test of the season: seven matches in 10 days.

Still, 3,000 miles were not enough to keep the team from playing like they were at home, as they won six of their seven matches, including three against top-10 teams.

The trip started off with a bang, as the team easily won its first three matches over California Poly-Pomona, Chapman and California Tech.

On March 21, the team suffered its first defeat of the season, losing 4-3 to Claremont-McKenna. But Middlebury came back with a vengeance in its next two matches, sweeping both 10th-ranked Pacific Lutheran and sixth-ranked Trinity of Texas by scores of 7-0.

Then came the biggest match of the trip, a March 25 showdown with defending National Champion and top-ranked UC-Santa Cruz, which defeated Middlebury in the Division III Championship match last spring.

The Panthers did Middlebury proud, celebrating a close 4-3 victory over their rivals. The match was punctuated by wins from senior captain Ari Beilin '06, who went 6-1 on the trip, and Conrad Olson '09, who went a perfect 6-0 in the Golden State.

That match wrapped up the team's trip. Unfortunately for Middlebury, however, their next opponent happened to be Dartmouth, a Division I team. To make things worse, the Panthers were scheduled to play the Big Green away from home, in Hanover, N.H.

This time, the team was unable to pull out a victory, falling 5-2 in a match that saw Olson's nine-match winning streak come to an end.

But the team was not about to let one loss to a Division I team derail its season as they made clear with a resounding 7-0 thumping of NESCAC foe Tufts last Friday.

Playing in their first outdoor home match of the season, the now fourth-ranked Panthers absolutely dominated in each of their seven matches, with no player losing more than two games in any of the 15 sets played.

Looking ahead, the Panthers will strive to remain undefeated in NESCAC play, as they wrap up their season with four intra-league matches, including one against sixth-ranked Williams College.

The team will also play one match outside the league against Union College of Schenectady, N.Y. Once the regular season wraps up at home on April 22 vs. Amherst, the team will begin preparing for the NESCAC Championships, which will take place at Williams from April 28-30.